Our family is raising funds to help our friend, who we will call “Marta” to protect her privacy. After living and working in the US for over 25 years and renewing her Temporary Protective Status with the Department of Homeland Security every 18 months, Marta is being threatened with deportation. Our family is trying to raise $15,000 to help Marta defray legal fees and living expenses and to fend off this threat of deportation. We hope you can support her.

Marta was a long time and loving caregiver for our elderly father for 6 years, from 2004 until his death in 2010. She was and is a trustworthy, faithful and a super caring person and got along great with Dad. She became his favorite of his four caretakers and he loved her so much he treated her like family, giving her life, financial and health tips to better her life. He lit up every time she was around. Marta’s loving care contributed to making the last years of our father’s life with Parkinson’s Disease an active, comfortable, secure and happy one.

Marta came to the United States from war-torn El Salvador in the late 1990’s when she was just 22, feeling she needed to financially help her family’s lives back in El Salvador. For over three decades, Marta has worked multiple full and part time jobs to support herself and send funds back home to her family. She has never broken the law and pays income taxes.

Marta has lived in the US legally under provisions of the Temporary Protective Status (TPS) program, established by Congress in 1990 offering humanitarian relief to individuals fleeing from designated countries due to war, natural disasters, and instability, making their return to those countries unsafe.

Marta has always complied with TPS requirements and consequently submitted paperwork to renew her TPS status with DHS every 18 months for the past 24 years without incident. The last time she applied for her renewal at the end of 2024, she was informed that TPS was renewed but she never received the appropriate paperwork. This past August, following Trump’s election and assault on immigrants, she was astonishingly told she was not in compliance, her TPS status (and consequent work permit) is in jeopardy, and she potentially could be deported back to El Salvador.

She is currently working with lawyers to apply for an I-601 Waiver which may enable her to retain her TPS status and stay in the United States.

This increased scrutiny on Marta is all part of President Trump’s continued attempt to deport immigrants from the United States. He is not targeting just criminals as he claims. He has ICE arresting and jailing many innocent people by indiscriminately raiding homes and workplaces, accosting people walking on the street and going to courthouses when they lawfully show up for their asylum hearings. He has reportedly deported almost 200,000 people through July of this year.

Over the past months the Trump administration has announced the termination of TPS programs for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Multiple lawsuits continue to be filed to dispute Trump’s actions. Although El Salvador is not currently listed, Marta and her fellow El Salvadorans know that any minute, their lives could change drastically.

Marta has since become a member of our family, attending all our family gatherings, from birthdays, to Thanksgiving and Christmas. We know that many of you have friends, family colleagues and others who are facing similar circumstances as Trump actions disrupt the lives of so many. We hope you can support Marta fight this deportation.

All donations are gratefully welcome and will help ease the financial and emotional burden she is facing today. Thank you.